Hybrid broadcast for the video-on-demand service

  • Authors:

  • Ma Huadong;Kang G. Shin

  • Affiliations:

  • College of Computer Science and Technology, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications Beijing 100876, P.R. China;Real-Time Computing Lab, EECS Department, The University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Computer Science and Technology
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

Multicast offers an efficient means of distributing video contents/programs to multiple clients by batching their requests and then having them share a server's video stream. Batching customers' requests is either client-initiated or server-initiated. Most advanced client-initiated video multicasts are implemented by patching. Periodic broadcast, a typical server-initiated approach, can be entirety-based or segment-based. This paper focuses on the performance of the VoD service for popular videos. First, we analyze the limitation of conventional patching when the customer request rate is high. Then, by combining the advantages of each of the two broadcast schemes, we propose a hybrid broadcast scheme for popular videos, which not only lowers the service latency but also improves clients' interactivity by using an active buffering technique. This is shown to be a good compromise for both lowering service latency and improving the VCR-like interactivity.